Monthly Archives: October 2017

We were somewhere in Benewah County, Idaho, on a resplendent late April afternoon in 1993. I had planted the last of my trees for the day, shouldered my hoedad and was walking down a skid trail, eyes on the fertile valleys spread out below us, the coil of blue silver river, …

In the town of Hershey, a couple of hours’ drive east of Havana in Mayabeque province, you can see the past and the future of Cuban farming, side by side. More on this story Read more of our reporting on nutrition and food access. Read more of our reporting on …

Tilahun Liben thought he was seeing things. Surely that mound of orange orbs under those trees near his church couldn’t be oranges. Could they? More on this story Read more of our reporting on nutrition and food access. Read more of our reporting on farms and labor. It was 2010, …

At some point or another, we’ve all cringed at the videos: lame cows struggling to stand; egg-laying hens squeezed into small, stacked cages; hogs confined to gestation crates, unable to walk or turn. More on this story Read more of our reporting on oceans and freshwater Over the last decade, …

Erika Chavez and Jerome Nick Jr., cousins who work for the Yurok Tribal Fisheries Department, are patrolling the Klamath River where it flows into the Pacific Ocean in the far northwest corner of California. Nick perches in the front of the boat, with Chavez at the helm as they head …

In 1970, John E. Franz, a 40-year-old chemist from Springfield, Illinois, hit upon a discovery that would profoundly change agriculture: a chemical that works its way into the leaves of weeds and down to their roots, eventually killing them. Franz sold the patent for the breakthrough to his employer, Monsanto, for …

The drive to Casey and Amber O’Neill’s HappyDay Farms winds up a dirt track off Highway 101, three hours north of San Francisco. The road climbs to 3,000 feet along a ridge with stunning views of pine-covered mountains and the blue band of the Pacific Ocean, 25 miles to the …